WND

Google staff sought to rig search against Trump travel ban

Discussed countering 'Islamophobic' results for 'Islam,' 'Muslim'

Art Moore, co-author of the best-selling book "See Something, Say Nothing," entered the media world as a PR assistant for the Seattle Mariners and a correspondent covering pro and college sports for Associated Press Radio. He reported for a Chicago-area daily newspaper and was senior news writer for Christianity Today magazine and an editor for Worldwide Newsroom before joining WND shortly after 9/11. He earned a master's degree in communications from Wheaton College.

Two days after Trump the Jan. 27, 2017, ban was signed, the employees suggested ways to “leverage search,” or manipulate the algorithm, arguing “this country and Google, would not exist without immigration.”

“Overall idea: Leverage search to highlight important organizations to donate to, current news, etc. to keep people abreast of how they can help as well as the resources available for immigrations [sic] or people traveling,” said an email sent by a marketing employee.

A product manager responded: “I know this would require a full on sprint to make happen, but I think this is the sort of super timely and imperative information that we need as we know that this country and Google, would not exist without immigration.”

A Google spokesman responding to the reporting, insisting the emails “were just a brainstorm of ideas, none of which were ever implemented.”

Google maintained it “has never manipulated its search results or modified any of its products to promote a particular political ideology — not in the current campaign season, not during the 2016 election, and not in the aftermath of President Trump’s executive order on immigration.”

“Our processes and policies would not have allowed for any manipulation of search results to promote political ideologies,” the spokesman said.

However, WND reported earlier this month a newly unearthed video shows Google executives at their first weekly meeting after the election of Donald Trump in 2016 exhibited panic and dismay while expressing their determination to thwart the new administration’s agenda as well as the emerging global populist movement.

Google declined to answer Fox News regarding whether or not employees involved in the email chain were disciplined in any way.

“It is our policy to not comment on individual employees,” a spokesman said.

WND reported last month the recent wave of censorship of conservative voices on the internet by tech giants mirrors a plan concocted by a coalition of George Soros-funded, progressive groups to take back power in Washington from President Trump’s administration.

Peter Schweizer, the producer of the film, “The Creepy Line,” noted Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt’s role in the Hillary Clinton campaign in 2016 and the “massive revolving door between Google and the Obama administration.”

“They are very much steeped in the tradition of Burning Man and what Burning Man represents,” Schweizer said of Google’s top executives, including Schmidt, and their participation in the annual Bohemian-style festival in the Nevada desert known for its principle of “radical inclusion.”

Schweizer emphasized that Google is certainly entitled to its worldview and can run the company as it wishes, but it can’t continue to insist that it’s a neutral platform and therefore immune to the requirements that publishers face under the Communications Decency Act of 1996.

Google is not a neutral platform, like a telegraph company, he said, that merely relays information from one point to another.